The Training Wheels of Theology

 "Beware the man of one book," said Thomas Aquinas. 

He was not warning the world of those who only actually only ever read one book, even though most Christians, and certainly most Catholics, have never actually read their Bible from cover to cover. For nothing convinces Christians to convert to atheism faster than reading the whole Bible, with its talking donkey's and snakes, and bears tearing children to shreds for the unforgivable sin of laughing at a bald man.   

 Rather, Aquinas was warning the world of all those who only read books that reinforce their willingness to "believe" that the the one book they are convinced is more sacred than anything other book ever written is all they need - even if they've never actually read the damn thing - to trust that they are more enlightened, more righteous, and more godlike, than those who read anything else. And they believe this, even though the man who reads only one book can be even more ignorant than those who don't even know how to read.

The miracle of this is that those who do the very thing Aquinas warned against not only believe they have free will, even though they fear reading too many other books may injure their ability to maintain their own brand of "faith" in their one book, but are actually "humble" by insisting they are as inerrant in their assertions - regardless of a lack of evidence to support those assertions or the growing mountain of scientific evidence that proves such assertions are both false and detrimental to being human - as their "one book" is infallible in claims that haven't been upgraded since (at least for fundamentalist Christians) the age of the dinosaurs. 

Why do some people cling to "one book" as if it were their mother's apron strings? Mostly because, on a rational level, they don't actually believe it. The constant threat they feel they are under from others is actually a fear that flows from the fact they must "have faith" in claims that their own rational mind cannot help but suspect make no sense, but which their emotional brain has been conditioned to depend on for all its meaning, identity, and security, and attachment to a larger clan or community. 

The Christian, as a result, can only love themselves to the degree they can forgive themself for the sin of doubt that is the most natural thing for their rational mind to exercise when dealing with claims about supernatural forces and ideas. And they train themself to do this by forcing themself to rely on their emotional brain to "feel" the truth they depend on is real, for fear that without that feeling, they are but empty bottles floating on a stormy sea of chance and meaninglessness. 

In short, they need to believe that all of their meaning, especially that of their own suffering and sacrifice, comes from a God, rather than finding a way to give their suffering and sacrifice meaning themselves. For doing the former, they believe their deserve eternal rewards in heaven, and those who dare to do the latter, so the Christian believes, deserves no less than eternal torments.  This is like believing you'll be given angel wings after having spent your whole life riding the bicycle of your own body with the training wheels of your religion, while anyone who learns to ride that same bike without those training wheels deserves to be doused in gasoline and set on fire.

For the Christian, this life-long dependence on those training wheels is proof of the miracle of their  "one book." For everyone else in the universe, it's proof that Christians are completely bat-shit crazy!